"Ahahahaha! Delicious! SO delicious! Chrollo... all your abilities... all your memories... they're ALL MINE! Ghehehehe...!"
Hisoka's voice—insane to its absolute zenith—echoed simultaneously from within the phantom, filled with a sickly, consuming satisfaction and the euphoric ecstasy of ultimate revenge!
The power of the Blood Soul Card had mutated in a horrifying, unforeseen direction at the exact moment Chrollo's mental defenses were crushed to nothing under the assault of the real-world Hisoka phantom!
Rather than simply killing Chrollo, the card had done something infinitely worse.
It had consumed him.
Chrollo's soul, his Nen abilities, even fragments of his fundamental life essence—every last shred of what made him Chrollo Lucilfer—was forcibly devoured and gorged into Hisoka's vengeful phantom like a ravenous feast!
The sight was grotesque, surreal, and horrifying beyond all imagination! Like a scroll of Hell painting unrolling itself across the material plane!
[DING! Anomalous Soul Fusion Phenomenon Detected... Blood Soul Card: Hisoka experiencing unknown evolution...]
[Trait Plunder Triggered! Target: Fused Aberration (Chrollo's Soul Core + Hisoka's Vengeful Blood Phantom)...]
[Plundering...]
[Congratulations! You have obtained a new Composite Trait: Soul Feast of Malice — Dark Gold!]
[Soul Feast of Malice — Dark Gold]: Evolved from the Blood Soul Card after fusing with a soul source of extreme hatred and obsession. Can be actively released or used to "Mark" a target, devouring their soul source, memory fragments, and a portion of their Nen abilities (success rate and completeness determined by the differential in spiritual willpower between both parties). Upon successful consumption, a unique "Soul Brand of Malice" is formed. Allows the caster to temporarily manifest and wield a portion of the devoured entity's power (degree of manifestation and overall potency determined by fusion completion rate). This ability carries a severe, innate backlash risk and requires immense spiritual force to suppress.
The cold, digital system notification rang out in Ryker's mind, followed immediately by a torrent of icy, viscous, hatred-drenched information flooding into his consciousness!
Even with his formidable spiritual resilience, Ryker felt his mind violently sting, like a needle driven into his brain.
Countless memory fragments belonging to Chrollo—the supreme mastery of a Phantom Troupe leader, the history of the Spider, dark, unfinished schemes—and the deeply twisted obsessions of Hisoka—his fanatical addiction to combat, his all-consuming hatred of Chrollo, his insatiable hunger for worthy opponents—crashed against his consciousness like a dam breaking!
"Urgh!"
Ryker grunted, lightning flaring violently in his eyes. He forcefully smashed down on the tidal wave of chaotic, alien thoughts and suppressed them.
He looked up at the contorting, bloating amalgamation above—still releasing agonized and manic screams—and his cold eyes sparked with an extraordinary gleam.
Dark Gold tier. A composite ability directly tied to the soul and the act of plundering itself. The unexpected value of this windfall might actually surpass the "key" crystal!
"Hisoka... Chrollo..."
Ging looked up at the twisting, writhing mass of malice floating overhead. His brow furrowed just a fraction—almost imperceptibly—and a flash of complex emotion passed through his eyes, before the knowing, world-weary indifference settled back onto his face.
"Really... not a single moment of peace, is there."
Zeno, Beyond, and the others were all shaken by this sudden, utterly visceral horror emerging from the soul dimension. Even powerhouses of their caliber felt primal, instinctual wariness when faced with something as fundamentally disturbing as the consumption and fusion of human souls.
And just then, the floating seven-colored crystal seemed to react!
Stimulated by the intense spiritual energy of the writhing soul amalgamation above and the strange, rule-like "Domain" radiating from Ging below, the crystal suddenly erupted in a burst of radiance unlike anything it had shown before!
VMMMMM—!!!!
A pillar of seven-colored light blasted skyward! It was no longer a gentle, rotating shimmer. It was a focused, world-piercing spear of pure resonant light, carrying within it a sense of urgent, ancient summoning!
And the tip of this pillar did not point toward the dome of the arena.
It pointed directly into the unclosed spatial rift behind Ging—the rift that led to the Dark Continent!
Everywhere the pillar passed, the chaotic, collapsing energy currents were forcibly smoothed. The fractured spatial structure seemed to briefly stabilize.
A grand, impossibly ancient will—one that felt as though it originated from the very bones of the world—traveled down that seven-colored pillar, subtly and unmistakably transmitting from the other side of the rift!
"The Resonance... has begun."
Ging stared at the pillar of light connecting sky to abyss, and for the first time, the casual, carefree expression disappeared from his face entirely. A deep, solemn gravity settled over his features.
"The coordinates of the 'Door' are being activated. The true Trial... or rather, the invitation... has been sent."
His gaze swept across the entire arena—over Zeno, Beyond, Ryker, and every survivor—and his voice carried clearly into every single pair of ears:
"This [Ruler's Blessing]... was never the final prize of Greed Island. It is a beacon. It is a boarding pass. And more than that... it is the only 'Key' to unlocking the true gate to the 'Root of the World Tree'—the absolute core and true origin of the Dark Continent! Claiming it only grants you the right to set foot in that ultimate wilderness. Whether you can walk to the base of the World Tree alive, and witness the truth of all things... that depends entirely on your own fate."
Ging's words fell like the hammer of a final judgment!
The rules of the Greed Island game were completely, irrevocably overturned at this moment. The supposed "final clear," the supposed "ultimate reward"—it was nothing more than a minuscule, inconsequential starting line for a far grander adventure!
The core of the Dark Continent! The Root of the World Tree! The origin and truth of all things!
The sheer weight of the revelation slammed into everyone's neural pathways simultaneously!
Ambition, terror, greed, maddened curiosity—every conceivable emotion silently boiled and collided in the dead-silent arena!
Beyond's eyes burned like twin suns at their apex. The obsessive desire to conquer the very heart of the Dark Continent was completely, catastrophically ignited!
Zeno's ancient, inscrutable face underwent a subtle but profound shift. Even in the Zoldyck Family's millennium of accumulated, forbidden intelligence, there were only cryptic whispers about the "World Tree"—a taboo subject so absolute that even the first-generation Family Patriarch had refused to speak of it!
Ryker felt the cold, viscous, hate-laced power of his newly plundered [Soul Feast of Malice — Dark Gold] trait pulsing in his core. He looked at the seven-colored pillar of light, then at the bottomless rift, and the plundering instinct in his very soul flared with a hunger and intensity he had never experienced before. He wanted the Root of the World Tree with every fiber of his being!
"A key... a right of passage..."
Ryker slowly raised his head. His gaze traveled past the writhing soul amalgamation, past the blinding seven-colored pillar of light, and finally locked onto the deep, abyssal spatial rift behind Ging.
The rift that led to an endless, unknowable darkness.
The corners of his mouth slowly curled into a cold, utterly aggressive smile.
"The view behind that door... I'm claiming it."
His voice wasn't loud. But it carried the absolute, irreversible conviction of a man who had decided, and the unquestionable dominance of someone who has never once been told "no" by the universe.
Like a thunderclap, the declaration detonated over the battlefield that had fallen into a brief, stunned silence under the weight of cosmic secrets!
And just as the detonation echo faded, one voice rose like an ancient dragon's roar to meet it!
"Bring it on!"
The moment those three words thundered out, the air inside the Crown Arena seemed to be violently vacuumed out.
Time staggered. Space buckled. Every single survivor—traumatized players and desperately struggling Game Masters alike—felt an invisible, freezing hand close around their hearts. Their blood nearly turned to ice in their veins.
The colossal Guanyin illusion manifested before Zeno. It stood dozens of meters tall, its entire form radiating a warm, vastly deep, milky-white luminance. A thousand arms unfurled and extended, casting a shadow over half the arena's dome.
Every single palm was rendered in flawless, immaculate detail—the lines of each hand carved deep like mountain ranges and riverbeds, radiating both a boundless compassion capable of healing the world's wounds... and a terrifying, hidden power capable of tearing the stars themselves from the sky!
[100-Type Guanyin: First Form — Merciful Crossing!]
The enormous palm strike carried a soul-trembling sense of peaceful intent—a will so absolute it seemed to want to embrace, absorb, and fully dissolve all violence and sharp killing intent in the world. With a slowness that was anything but gentle, the palm advanced toward the shrieking, space-tearing beam of white lightning!
The Palm of Mercy versus the Spear of Destruction!
Two forces—diametrically opposed in nature, yet both standing at the absolute pinnacle of power—collided within the billionth of a second at the very center of the arena!
KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM—!!!!!!!!!
An ultimate roar that human language has no words to describe!
It sounded like the singularity explosion at the birth of the universe, and simultaneously like the tolling of a death knell at the collapse of an entire dimensional plane!
Pure, absolute light and destructive energy were compressed and annihilated against each other at the point of impact to the point of absolute frenzy! Time lost all meaning at this moment. Space was torn and scattered into broken streams of light!
There was no shockwave. There was no pressure wave. There was only an all-consuming, absolute, incandescent white!
Then, like a volcano suppressed to its absolute limit finally erupting, the physicalized energy storm burst outward from that collision point in a catastrophic, spherical shockwave! It detonated in every direction simultaneously!
CRACK! KABOOOOOOM—!!!
The white arena tiles—harder than tempered steel, etched with every protective rune the architects of Greed Island could devise—were ripped up in massive sheets like crackers thrown into a blender, exploding, launching into the air, and instantly vaporized into the finest possible dust!
The ground violently caved in and collapsed, forming a massive, yawning impact crater over a hundred meters in diameter! Its edges were jagged, vicious cracks that spread like ugly black centipedes reaching out toward the far edges of the arena!
At the perimeter, the last few remaining ancient rune-engraved pillars finally gave out entirely. The cracks that had been spreading across their surfaces since the first impact instantly widened and penetrated clean through! With a sound that set every surviving tooth on edge, those pillars—symbols of the game's rules and structural stability—toppled like rotten timber, crashing and tumbling in a chain collapse!
The massive stone blocks, infused with annihilating lightning-fire and residual Nen, rained down on the chaotic crowd below like a meteor shower!
"The dome! The dome is going to collapse!"
One of the Game Masters released a piercing, desperate scream.
The iridescent Nen barrier enclosing the entire arena—like a pane of fragile, exquisite glass struck by a sledgehammer over and over—was now completely blanketed in a dense, spiderweb network of cracks. It flickered and pulsed violently, emitting a shrill, piercing screech like glass shattering in slow motion. The barrier warped and buckled dramatically, as if the very next second would see it detonate completely, exposing this apocalyptic hellscape directly to the open skies of Greed Island!
"Ugh—AH! Help me! HELP—!!"
A lone Hunter who had strayed slightly too close had his Nen defenses shredded like wet paper. The raging energy turbulence swallowed him instantly. His scream was cut off halfway as his body was reduced to cinders and ash within the blinding white light!
"Hold it! Someone hold it!"
Soros had completely abandoned every last shred of his earlier calculated composure. His gold-rimmed glasses had been shattered. His meticulously styled hair was a wild, blown-out disaster. His corpulent face was twisted beyond recognition by sheer, absolute terror as he screamed himself hoarse at Aaron and Lilith!
Aaron's ten rings blazed frantically. He wove layer upon layer of invisible Nen threads into a web of overlapping nets in front of them! Lilith sprayed massive clouds of thick, adhesive pink poison mist, attempting to erode and decelerate the shockwave!
But these defenses were a mantis raising its arms against a charging chariot. All three of them were violently shoved backward by the storm, plowing deep furrows into the ground. Aaron and Lilith both bled from their noses and mouths. Soros was grazed across the shoulder by a flying boulder infused with annihilating lightning-fire. The flesh and bone were ripped away instantly. He let out an absolutely blood-curdling, animalistic shriek!
Under Razor's fury-contorted, bloodshot-eyed screaming, the thirty Game Masters and Shadow Warriors pushed their aura output past every conceivable limit, fighting to maintain the massive protective barrier. But it was a soap bubble in a hurricane, violently deforming and caving inward, its light rapidly dying.
Every surge of energy from the impact hit them like a battering ram. The Game Masters inside the barrier shuddered violently, their faces white as chalk, blood running from the corners of their mouths. Their eyes were filled with sheer, absolute disbelief and despair.
The defensive line they had been so incredibly, profoundly proud of... felt so infinitesimally small. So laughably, pitifully insignificant when caught in the residual crossfire of these two monsters!
Ptchh!
Biscuit coughed up a small mouthful of blood, her pink Nen barrier shuddering violently. Protecting Gon and Killua alone was already pushing her to her absolute limit.
The oppressive, world-ending pressure felt like a physical mountain range piling itself on top of her chest, making even breathing feel agonizing.
She stared into the heart of the storm, her jewel-like eyes reflecting the reflection of that towering Guanyin and the indomitable, unyielding white beam of lightning.
This power... has completely transcended the realm of Nen itself! Ging... what kind of monster did you drag into this world?!
"Brother Ryker..."
Gon's jaw was clenched so hard his teeth were grinding. His nails had driven deep into his palms, and blood dripped silently from between his fingers. Every muscle in his body trembled with a reflexive, primal terror—the involuntary shaking of a small creature in the face of a natural disaster.
But deeper than the fear was something else.
Resentment. Want.
He had never felt the gap in power so clearly. He had never wanted to be stronger so desperately and so absolutely in his entire life!
Killua's silver hair stood on end. His ice-blue pupils had contracted to needle points. Even the blood-bound fear Illumi's presence installed in him since childhood seemed to be temporarily overridden by the sheer, stupefying magnitude of what he was witnessing.
He stared at that beam of white lightning—still burning, still unyielding, still refusing to die under the Guanyin's palm—and his body trembled with a combination of extreme excitement and a sudden, electric, crystalline understanding!
This is it. This is what Brother Ryker meant... 'My fists make the rules'!
The dust and the howling energy turbulence, like furious, reluctant tides, raged for what felt like a century before finally beginning to retreat and settle!
The sight at the center of the arena was the aftermath of a war between gods and forces of nature, a wasteland of absolute ruin.
A massive impact crater—over two hundred meters in diameter and a full dozen meters deep—had completely replaced the smooth, pristine floor of the arena. The crater walls were scorched jet-black, still breathing wisps of dark smoke. The crater floor ran with dark-red molten rock, radiating a terrifying, blistering heat.
The air was thick with the acrid, nauseating combination of ozone, charred matter, and blood.
At either end of the crater.
Beneath Zeno's feet was the only relatively intact section of the arena—a circular platform roughly ten meters in diameter, a lone island of stability in the sea of ruin.
Both sleeves of his wide, gray martial arts uniform had been completely shredded, exposing his arms. They were as dense and powerful as ancient bronze iron, with thick veins corded across them like coiled, furious dragons.
His ancient, weathered face no longer held even a trace of the playful, leisurely ease that had characterized him at the beginning. In its place was an unprecedented weight of gravity, and beneath that... a deep, carefully buried tremor of genuine shock!
His hands—tucked into the ruins of his sleeves—were trembling. Slightly. Just barely. And his breathing was heavier than it should have been.
The colossal Guanyin illusion had long since completely dissipated. But the vast, lingering atmospheric pressure left in its wake was still suffocatingly heavy.
At the other end of the crater, the blinding white lightning had finally been extinguished.
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